


Cleansing Rituals

by evocates



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Fade to Black, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of False Pregnancy, Only Marvel Thing I've Ever Written, Shadowlands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2012-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 14:21:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocates/pseuds/evocates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt comes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cleansing Rituals

It’s not Hell’s Kitchen, but Matt is familiar with this rooftop, all the same. The feel of the concrete beneath his feet, the smells from the people below—the scents of their living, their breathing—and the heartbeats of its inhabitants. Each one of them has a different beat, and all of it joins together in some sort of staccato rhythm.

Matt has never taken much to commercial music. It’s always too loud, all overwhelming—he can barely hear the beats, much less the tunes, the notes. The sound system in his flat has always been used to help his ‘sonar sense’, and he buys CDs based not on how good the music is, but how well the beats can help him _see_.

That apartment has been confiscated by the New York Police after Shadowland as evidence, even though there’s no real evidence. Matt is going to get it back someday, like he’s going to pick up all the pieces of his life someday. It’s not tonight, though.

Tonight he waits, costumed and listening to the song of over a hundred hearts, for Danny to notice that he’s there.

It never takes long.

Danny’s window opens, and he pokes his head out. “Come on in,” he whispers, far too soft for anyone without Matt’s senses to hear, and retreats back inside. Matt waits a moment, two, before he leaps off the roof and drops in.

The flat is empty except for them—there’s no other heartbeat. That he has already made sure of, but it takes a few moments and the thumping beats of Danny’s downstairs neighbour’s bass for Matt to realise that there’s practically nothing here. Danny’s things are boxed up.

The man seems to notice his curiosity, because he shrugs, leaning out of the window for a moment as he pulls it close again. “I’m moving into the Avengers Tower,” he says, and Matt remembers—Danny is a ‘New Avenger’ now, working beside Luke and Jessica. He sounds as cheerful as ever, but there’s a certain sort of hollow vibration in his voice that he has never heard before.

Not even in Shadowland, when Danny had been screaming at him to stop. There had been hope there, and a strong, unbreakable belief in Matt himself. Matt doesn’t know what he had done for people to believe in him so thoroughly even when he’s ordering in their execution, but Danny hadn’t given up, then. Hasn’t sounded like this—this... hollow. Empty.

Something happened, but Matt can’t find the words to begin to ask.

“I don’t have any more beer left,” Danny says, unperturbed by Matt’s silence, walking past him to the kitchens. Matt walks around the couch, tracing fingers around the back as a guide he doesn’t need. He sits down.”Actually, I don’t have much left.” There’s a puzzled frown in his frown that Matt doesn’t need to see to know—he has felt it with his fingers, before.

“Is green tea okay?”

“Yea,” Matt says, nodding as he tugs off his cowl, lets it fall on his shoulders. “Green tea’s fine.” Pause. “Thanks, Danny.”

Silence again, for a moment he is at a loss. It has always been beer, and then Danny talks about everything and nothing and Matt listens to his voice, his heartbeat, and then Matt will kiss him and taste beer on his tongue before he pushes him down and fucks him on the couch. It’s... a habit. Something like an arrangement, because Matt can’t bring himself to touch Elektra and after what happened to Milla he knows better than to try to have a relationship.

Danny is—

There’s a soft _click_ , the light switch flipping off, and Matt jerks slightly, because he has forgotten this, too. He has never told anyone, but he hates light from fluorescent light bulbs. They fall on his skin all over, and it’s a subtle, unending pins and needles crawling all over his body. It’s the reason why he doesn’t switch on the lights in his own house unless he has other people over.

He has never told anyone, but Danny knows anyway. And he does little things like this, to make Matt more comfortable.

It’s one of the reasons why Matt always comes to him. The other reason is written in the Daredevil costume that hangs in Danny’s closet.

“Hope the police didn’t give you trouble when you were coming over,” Danny says, and he sets down a cup in front of Matt. Matt takes it automatically, blind eyes following Danny as he sits down on the armchair opposite the couch.

“We—Foggy, Dakota, and I—have been trying to compile evidence that it wasn’t you who killed Bullseye,” Danny’s voice is wry, amused. “Spiderman’s been gathering some sort of forensic evidence, so that should help. And,” the amusement increases, “that kid who follows him around—Parker, you know, the guy who takes a lot of pictures of Spiderman?—he managed to catch quite a few photographs of the rituals that the Hand had been conducting. Dakota’s compiling information of the Hand’s activities beforehand. Eyewitness reports, that sort of thing.”

He sips at the tea, and steamrolls over Matt before he can think of saying anything. “It’s slow-going. The Hand ninjas like to kill themselves so it’s hard to pin anything on even one of them, you know? We know that you’re innocent, but the American justice system isn’t exactly equipped to handle ‘demonic possession’ very well, so it’s a good thing you disappeared for a while.” There’s another pause, and Danny sips at his tea.

Matt takes the chance to speak, “... thank you. You really don’t have to—“

“I don’t have to, I want to, it’s really our pleasure, it’s what friends do for each other,” Danny says, and there’s a grin in his voice, finally chasing away the hollowness. Matt’s lips quirk up slightly, and he puts down his cup.

“And it’s what I would have done if you were in my position, right?”

“See? You’re catching up.”

Matt ducks his head down, and his shoulders shake. It’s like a laugh, but not quite—still, it’s the closest thing he managed to come to it since Shadowland.

“I’m glad,” Danny says, suddenly. “That you didn’t try to say that you were guilty.”

And Matt smiles, just a little. “I like to think that I’m not. I—“ he drops his head down, stares unseeingly at his own hands. “I confessed, afterwards.” The priest’s low, soothing voice still lingers in his memories, like a child’s security blanket that he refuses to get rid of.

“Did it make you feel better?”

“Yes,” Matt says. Then, he shakes his head. “No. In some ways, I guess. I don’t think that I’m less guilty, but...” he shakes his head, hard. He left New York for so long, left Hell’s Kitchen to Black Panther, and he still can’t vocalise what exactly it is that he feels about the whole situation. There’s no longer the same crushing weight he had felt at first, at least, but there’s no absolution, either.

The only conclusion Matt can reach is that he has to push himself harder, to save more people to make up for his failures. It’s the conclusion he has come to every single time he has failed, and sometimes Matt wonders why he had felt the bone-deep need to run away.

And why Danny doesn’t even ask him about it, much less chastise him.

“There’s a K’un Lun ritual,” Danny says, and he drains his green tea and sets it on the table. Then, he walks around it, and kneels in front of Matt. “It says that whenever you have sinned, you take the ashes of the joss sticks used to pray to the Great Gods, and you mix it with the clearest water from the highest mountain’s top. You bathe in the mixture, and then you come out cleansed, because Nature and the Great Gods has seen your sins and forgiven you for them.”

Matt’s fingers run through Danny’s hair, falls down to curve against a cheekbone.

“I don’t think it’s that easy.”

“No,” Danny says, easily, and he’s reaching upwards. Matt meets him halfway, and Danny murmurs the rest of the words against his lips.

“But you know I forgive you anyway.”

Matt closes his eyes and doesn’t speak, sneaking his tongue out to lick against the roof of Danny’s mouth. Like always, Danny tastes of cheap Chinese takeout, greasy with far too much salt and too much MSG that sticks to Matt’s own tongue and refuses to leave. It’s funny, how Danny eats only cheap Chinese takeout—though he’s rich enough even now to afford eating at a high-class Chinese restaurant every night, rich enough to buy a chef from China and bring him to New York to cook for him—but he eats Chinese takeout like it’s the only thing he can afford. Like it’s the only thing he ever needs, no matter how much money he has.

It’s something that makes Matt reach out, clenches his hands against Danny’s biceps, and pulls him closer. Kisses him harder even as Danny’s leg bends, knee sinking into the couch beside Matt’s hip, and when Matt reaches out and presses his hand against his chest, he can feel Danny’s heart thundering in its own strong, unique rhythm.

Better music than anything he can buy in a store. Strong, steady, slowly picking up speed even as Matt starts to smell arousal in the air.

His hand clenches at Danny’s shoulders, pulls him down flat on the couch, sprawling him all over the cushions. Danny throws his head back, laughs quietly, and the sound fades into a gasp when Matt nips at his throat. Hands skim down Matt’s side, light, almost ghostly, finding the catches in the leather uniform, as familiar as if it is his own, and Matt is kicking off the red leather, pulling it off before he leans down again, presses his lips against Danny’s.

Breathes in his exhale. Moves to the beat of his heart.

For a blind man like him, it’s as intimate as looking into Danny’s eyes.

***

Later, when sweat plasters Matt’s hair across his forehead and Danny’s breath is rapid and shallow against his shoulder, Matt sits back, pulls out, and folds his legs underneath him. He takes the wet tissues that Danny has managed to whisk out of somewhere and wipes them both down.

And waits.

It takes three minutes of silence before Danny speaks. Answers the question that Matt has been asking even since he notices the hollowness in Danny’s voice.

“For... for some time I thought I was going to be a father,” Danny says, finally. He sounds wistful, quiet, and his breath is staccato in his throat even though his heartbeat is steadying, gradually. “Misty told me she was pregnant.”

A pause, and Matt doesn’t say anything. He waits a little more, and wonders how Danny can always talk about almost everything under the sun so quickly and effortlessly, but when it comes to things that actually _bother_ him; he’s always at a loss of words.

But it’s just the way Danny is, so he waits.

“I was going to marry her,” Danny continues, and his words trip over themselves, clumsy. His hands curl inwards, the blunt sound of nails pressing against skin resounding in Matt’s ears. “Even before I thought she was pregnant, I wanted to marry her. Bought a ring, hid it in a Chinese takeout box, proposed and everything.

“But then—it turns out that the test was a dud. The ultrasound shows that there’s nothing there.” His voice shakes, slightly. The sound of his swallow is loud as thunder in Matt’s ears, but he doesn’t reach out. Not yet. “Then it just— _everything_ just fell apart. Misty and I can’t live together anymore, and we can _work_ together but there’s just a shadow hanging over us, you know?” He takes a breath.

“And it’s my fault. It’s all my fault because it was the Iron Fist’s chi that caused the false positive in the first place, and I can’t fix things between us because—hell, how do you _even_ —“ he breaks off, turns away.

Matt hears everything he doesn’t say: _I just wanted to have a family; I wanted to have people who wouldn’t leave me._ He sees the wolves and the cliffs and the memories that Danny has only told him about once, with a voice full of false cheer and a dismissive “Well, I have friends now, and that’s what important.”

This, for him, must be like losing his family all over again.

“Someone very wise has told me once that there is a ritual,” Matt says, quiet but firm, leaning forward and pressing his fingers against Danny’s lips. “A ritual where you wash away your sins.”

A laugh burbles up from Danny’s throat, almost past his lips, and Matt smiles slightly as he stands. “I don’t have joss stick ash here, or clean mountain water, but I think we both can do with a shower.”

“Those things are only symbolic anyway,” Danny says, and he’s letting Matt pull him up. “Maybe my bathroom tiles can serve as the Gods—it’s kind of greyish-brownish—and, uh, the water’s not from a mountain, but it can still represent Nature.”

“Then it works,” Matt says, and doesn’t resist when Danny pushes him playfully into the bathroom. He steps back, tumbling into the stall and pulling Danny in with him until their chests are pressed against each other, then reaches back and switches on the hot water, letting it pour down around them.

“I thought I’m supposed to be the one comforting you,” Danny says, and his voice almost sounds wry and amused if not for the slight tremor, if not for the way his hand is clawing at Matt’s shoulder.

“It can work both ways,” Matt replies, and Danny is pressing their foreheads together, breaths ghosting against each other. Danny’s breath is just a little cooler than the hot water.

Then, he slides his hand up, tugs on the ends of Danny’s hair. Pulls him even closer, until their hearts are beating against each other, the rhythms mixing, disconnected and messy. Until their lips are brushing against each other, and Danny’s are parting, and they are kissing again, the tastes of each other mixed with that of the water.

Matt doesn’t think that this is absolution, or any sort of cleansing of his sins, no matter what Danny says. The blood on his hands is still there, and though he can’t see it, he can feel the stickiness; he can smell the metal.

But the water is pouring down around them, and he can barely smell or feel or hear or even taste anything other than Danny.

Perhaps this can be the first step towards redemption.

_End_


End file.
